In this article

Or Operator (Visual Basic)

In this article

Performs a logical disjunction on two Boolean expressions, or a bitwise disjunction on two numeric expressions.

Syntax

result = expression1 Or expression2

Parts

result
Required. Any Boolean or numeric expression. For Boolean comparison, result is the inclusive logical disjunction of two Boolean values. For bitwise operations, result is a numeric value representing the inclusive bitwise disjunction of two numeric bit patterns.

expression1
Required. Any Boolean or numeric expression.

expression2
Required. Any Boolean or numeric expression.

Remarks

For Boolean comparison, result is False if and only if both expression1 and expression2 evaluate to False. The following table illustrates how result is determined.

If expression1 is

And expression2 is

The value of result is

True

True

True

True

False

True

False

True

True

False

False

False

Note

In a Boolean comparison, the Or operator always evaluates both expressions, which could include making procedure calls. The OrElse Operator performs short-circuiting, which means that if expression1 is True, then expression2 is not evaluated.

For bitwise operations, the Or operator performs a bitwise comparison of identically positioned bits in two numeric expressions and sets the corresponding bit in result according to the following table.

If bit in expression1 is

And bit in expression2 is

The bit in result is

1

1

1

1

0

1

0

1

1

0

0

0

Note

Since the logical and bitwise operators have a lower precedence than other arithmetic and relational operators, any bitwise operations should be enclosed in parentheses to ensure accurate execution.

Data Types

If the operands consist of one Boolean expression and one numeric expression, Visual Basic converts the Boolean expression to a numeric value (–1 for True and 0 for False) and performs a bitwise operation.

For a Boolean comparison, the data type of the result is Boolean. For a bitwise comparison, the result data type is a numeric type appropriate for the data types of expression1 and expression2. See the "Relational and Bitwise Comparisons" table in Data Types of Operator Results.

Overloading

The Or operator can be overloaded, which means that a class or structure can redefine its behavior when an operand has the type of that class or structure. If your code uses this operator on such a class or structure, be sure you understand its redefined behavior. For more information, see Operator Procedures.

Example

The following example uses the Or operator to perform an inclusive logical disjunction on two expressions. The result is a Boolean value that represents whether either of the two expressions is True.

Example

The following example uses the Or operator to perform inclusive logical disjunction on the individual bits of two numeric expressions. The bit in the result pattern is set if either of the corresponding bits in the operands is set to 1.